


En mi cielo a crepúsculo eres como una nube

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, apparently i write city fic now, let's be real this is probably a one off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 18:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: A story of Joe and Kun's relationship, from before the beginning to what should've been the end, but isn't.





	En mi cielo a crepúsculo eres como una nube

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blindbatalex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/gifts).



> I don't even know where this came from other than Alex posting about wanting Joe/Kun

It’s a strange relationship, between goalscorer and goalkeeper. When they’re on the same team, it’s—it’s  _salvation_ , almost.

Joe is only a man, after all. He makes mistakes, and so does Kun. But the worst Kun’s mistakes get them is a not-goal, and most shots are not-goals anyway.

Joe’s mistakes lose them points.

So Kun is salvation, in a way. He’s small, and strong, and fast, and Joe mostly sees his back when they’re playing, the way the thickly-muscled legs—more nimble than they seem—dance around defenders in a way that Joe knows will haunt their dreams, the way Suarez and Torres and vintage Rooney haunt his own dreams.

They’re the magic and the man, Kun and him. It’s always that way for strikers and goalkeepers. It’s hard not to be a little bit in love with someone who is the polar opposite of you in every way.

But he loves him. Everything about him, the way he whispers in sleepy Spanish when he wakes up before the English kicks in, or just when he’s had a long, frustrating day and can’t be bothered and just trusts Joe to understand him anyway.

Joe knows a little bit of rudimentary Spanish, mostly profanity and dirty talk, though Kun laughs more often than not when he cusses people out with  _puta madre_. But his breath catches a little when he begs him to  _cógeme duro, amor, fucking please, Kun, necesito, I need you_ —

He loves the way Kun growls and kisses him, speaking in low Spanish that tugs at something below Joe’s navel and something else lower still as the blood rushes downwards and he can’t quite think straight when Kun’s looking at him like that. Even now, after two years.

Joe’s not Kun’s first. Not his first man, or his first footballer, and he’s not Joe’s first either—Milly had only left them in 2014, and it was only after that that Kun became his, after a few months of sitting next to each other at team dinners and rooming together on away trips and maybe Joe had accidentally kissed him once or twice or five or six times, and maybe none of them had been accidental at all, and then the last time, Kun had slid his warm hands under his shirt and pressed them against his abs, butterflies assembling en masse to the spot as if magnetically attracted to his hands. 

Joe is. By the way. Goalkeepers tend to be. Outfield players don’t harp on feet, but goalkeepers like hands. Or at least Joe does. It’s not like he and Fraser used to huddle up together and spend goalkeeping training talking about Steven Gerrard’s fantastic  _hands_ , after all.

So Joe’s not his first, and they’re both okay with that. Even when Joe’s meandering through the house and hears Kun talking in low, fast Spanish and the words  _mi poquito amor_  slip from his lips through the receiver into lucky, lucky ears.

Joe Hart secretly takes Ronaldo’s side in the debate about the best player in the world, and pretends there’s no pettiness attached to the decision. Messi has enough. He has everything. He doesn’t need Joe’s approval, but there’s a small satisfaction in refusing to give it to him.

When they play Liverpool, Joe finds his Milly and hugs him, realizing anew that maybe he has a thing for shorter men, men he can hold and wrap around when they’re lying in bed, men he can make feel safe and warm. Men who can make him their home the way he makes them his.

Pep comes in the summer, and Joe’s excited to work with him. He adores Kun right away, and they exchange stories in Spanish about Kun’s  _poquito_  and Pep’s pet project turned surrogate son. Joe likes watching them, likes that Kun doesn’t have that furrow in his brows like he used to when he spoke English and he still gets on days the words don’t come so easily. He likes that Kun laughs and smiles and that Pep gives him hugs. Kun’s his star. Joe understands the feeling.

Pep isn’t as excited to work with him, though. At all. He tries, to his credit. For a few weeks, he tries, gives him directions that Joe’s feet don’t quite know how to take. It feels like someone’s thrown him onto  _Strictly_ , only without the week of training, and he’s expected to just perform. Because that’s what training with Pep is. It feels like a match every single day. He has anxiety dreams where they practice taking penalties and every time one gets past him, Pep screams out a different team he might be sold to.

Joe says the right things to the media, though, and for once, they’re the true things, too.

I want to stay. I want to fight for my place. I have nothing but respect for Pep, and I look forward to learning from him. I think I can still get better.

Pep sends him to Italy. Joe’s agent goes in and fights tooth and nail for a loan instead of a sale. It works out well. Torino don’t have the money for his fee anyway.

He’s not proud of it, but when he’s feeling particularly cynical, he hopes that City crash down the table. He hopes they lose miserably without him, concede boatloads of goals. He remembers Kun when he thinks about that, and feels guilty when he reaches for the empty side of the bed.

The side of the bed doesn’t stay empty long. Andrea Belotti gives him the eyes, but he’s only twenty-two when he gets there, even if there are whispers that he’s to be given the armband one day soon. He’s too young, though, even if he is pretty, in a square-jawed, hollow-cheeked sort of way.

But Iago isn’t. He’s twenty-seven, which is two years younger than Kun, four years younger than Milly, and three years younger than Joe himself. He’s not as pretty as Kun. Not by a long shot. And he’s not movie-star handsome in the way that Milly is, either. But he has dark hair and dark eyes that get intense when they’re playing football and when they’re in bed, and perhaps most importantly of all, he speaks both Spanish and English, from a few years spent at Tottenham and Southampton before he’d left England. His accent is different from Kun’s, closer to Pep’s but not the same as that, either, because Pep had made it clear to everyone that he’s Catalan first, not Spanish, and Iago is nothing if not Spanish. He plays decent football, and he helps Joe get around using a patois of Spanish and English and translating it into Italian, and he mumbles in his sleep.

It falls apart some five or six months in, but they keep it professional. Joe’s the one who calls it off, says they’d be better off as friends.

Andrea is in his bed a week later, and this time, it doesn’t fall apart. He’s sweet and kind and handsome and his touch sends muted sparks through Joe’s skin and if he’s a little too pale and his hair is brown and not black, Joe ignores it and kisses him harder.

Andrea asks him if he’d stay, and Joe answers in Italian that’s still clumsy that he’d love to, but he’s a man made for England. Andrea laughs and kisses his temple.

 _It’s okay_ , he says in elegant Italian that flows like Joe’s never will.  _I don’t think we could afford to keep you. I don’t know if I could afford to keep you, either._

He’s perceptive, Andrea is. At this point, he’s twenty-three, at least, so Joe doesn’t feel quite so bad about having him lounging around in various states of undress as he packs his things back up. He keeps his phone number and goes home to City. There are rumors he might be sold to Liverpool, which wouldn’t be too bad—Jürgen Klopp would be a good manager to work under. He always beat Pep, at the very least, which would be a petty victory, but better than conceding a goal to his Kun, better than having that face haunt his dreams for reasons other than the fact that he still loves him.

He goes home to Kun, who’s just the same, though maybe his hair is a little different. It grows a little more equal between them after the year in Italy. Kun had missed him, and he’d missed Kun, but Italian had been pretty easy on the ears, too, and there were other Englishmen who had stared in awe at Kun’s soft Argentinian Spanish flowing into their ears, curling their toes in pleasure. Stones looks a little betrayed when Kun goes back to spending his time with Joe as soon as he gets back.

Joe comes home and trains with the boys again. It’s a blessing, to be back at home, to know that every single interaction isn’t going to require an extra level of effort that leaves him both physically and mentally exhausted at the end of every day—even if they don’t have training and he’s just been out around the city. He has a whole new level of respect for Kun now, his beautiful incredible man who navigates a world in English with an ease Joe doesn’t think he can ever attain in any other language. He tells him so, in shitty Italian that sounds fluid to ears that don’t understand it.

Kun likes it, though, begs him to speak Italian and then responds to it in Spanish until one of them can’t take the teasing anymore and steals the words away with a kiss.

Joe tells his agent that moving outside of England isn’t an option anymore. He’d enjoyed his year in Italy, but he can’t do it again. He’s too old for this. He’s a Premier League player, and he’ll stay that way until he retires or goes to America.

He gets a phone call one morning. The phone’s ringing disturbs Kun, who mutters a disgruntled  _vete al carajo, puta_ , as he shoves the phone at Joe and turns around to curl into his chest.

“Hullo?” Joe keeps his voice low, running a hand through Kun’s hair as his—well, they’d never defined it, really—lets out a soft, content sigh.

His agent informs him that he’s going to London to play for West Ham and Joe agrees and mentions that he’ll pack. He would do, too, if he’d bothered unpacking from Torino.

Kun doesn’t stay and watch him pack. He stands on his toes and pulls Joe down for one last kiss and tells him  _adios_  in a sorry voice before he slips out of Joe’s room and out of Joe’s house just as easily as he’d slipped in three years ago.

Joe sighs and calls a real estate agent to see about a house in London.

He gets a text from Andrea, congratulating him, and another from Milly, expressing his sympathy, and that pretty much says it all, really.

It’s a few weeks later that West Ham play against Manchester City in  _Iceland_ , of all places.

Kun scores against him. It’s not like Joe couldn’t have seen it coming, to be fair, but when they’re walking back into the tunnel, Kun manages to walk beside him and wraps his fingers around Joe’s wrist. 

He phones him that night, eager to catch up, even if it is just to say  _congratulations on being better than me—I always knew you were._

They end up in Kun’s hotel room, making love as quietly as they can, Kun moaning quietly, choking out Spanish obscenities out in each gasp before Joe kisses him again, desperate to feel this again one last time.

“ _El dos de diciembre_ ,” Kun says quietly, in the few minutes before they both fall asleep. “Is a long time.”

“ _Pero United_ ,” Joe mumbles, pressing a kiss to the broad, strong shoulder. “ _en agosto_. The thirteenth, love. I can find a way to get to you.”

Kun clutches him closer.

London is closer to Manchester than Italy is, at least, and that’s something.

**Author's Note:**

> I never write City, so if I messed them up terribly, that's my bad!
> 
> Title is from Pablo Neruda's Poema de Amor VI, the first line, which translates to "high in my sky at twilight you are like a cloud."
> 
> Is this one of the first Spanish poems I found with translation? Yes.   
> Did I struggle to find a title? Yes.   
> Do I rather like the one I've got? 
> 
> Judge for yourself.


End file.
